ARTICLE: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.

s/2015/preliminarysemiannual-uniform-crime-report-januaryjune-2015

Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, JanuaryJune, 2015

Preliminary figures indicate that law enforcement agencies throughout the nation
showed an overall increase of 1.7 percent in the number of violent crimes brought
to their attention for the first 6 months of 2015 when compared with figures
reported for the same time in 2014. The violent crime category includes murder,
rape (revised definition), rape (legacy definition), robbery, and aggravated assault.
The number of property crimes in the United States from January to June of 2015
decreased 4.2 percent when compared with data for the same time period in 2014.
Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is
also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals
due to fluctuations in reporting. Figures for 2015 indicate that arson decreased 5.4
percent when compared with 2014 figures for the same time period.
The data presented in Tables 1 and 2 indicate the percent change in offenses
known to law enforcement for the first 6 months of 2015 compared with those for
the first half of 2014 by population group and region, respectively. Table 3 reflects
the percent change in offenses reported within the nation for consecutive years
(each year compared to the prior year). Table 4 presents the number of offenses
known to law enforcement for agencies with resident populations of 100,000 or
more that provided 6 months of complete data for 2015. In addition, Table 4
presents 6 months of 2014 data, where available, as a point of comparison. All
data in this Report are preliminary.
PLEASE NOTE
In 2013, the FBIs UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a
revised definition within the Summary Based Reporting System. The term forcible
was removed from the offense name, and the definition was changed to
penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or
object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of
the victim.
The number of rape incidents reported using the revised definition, as well as the
number of rapes submitted using the legacy definition, are included in this report in
separate columns in each table. The rape figures for those agencies that changed
from reporting rape under the legacy definition in 2014 to the revised definition in
2015 are not included in trend calculations in Tables 1-3, but they are reported in
Table 4 for agencies 100,000 and more in population. Please note: Rape data
reported for 2014 and 2015 cannot be aggregated by all agencies. Instead, two
distinct groups of agencies (those reporting using the legacy definition and those
reporting using the revised definition) are used for calculating trends. Therefore,
the percent changes from one year to the next within each group are calculated
with fewer agencies than in recent years. Offenses with fewer counts are often
sensitive to minor differences when calculating trends. More information about this
subject is presented in footnotes and data declarations for each table.